Mokulskii, Stefan

Born July 26 (Aug. 7), 1896, in Tbilisi; died Jan. 25, 1960, in Moscow. Soviet theatrical and literary scholar. Doctor of philology (1937). Member of the CPSU (1940).

In 1918, Mokul’skii graduated from the department of philology at Kiev University. From 1923 to 1942 he taught at Leningrad University, where he became a professor in 1937, and at the A. I. Herzen Pedagogical Institute; he also worked at the Leningrad Theater Institute and at the State Academy for Art Studies. In 1943, Mokul’skii began teaching at the A. V. Lunacharskii State Institute of Theatrical Arts in Moscow; from 1943 to 1948 he was director of the institute and from 1952 to 1960 he held the chair of foreign theater. He also taught at the Academy of Social Sciences. Mokul’skii was head of the section on theory and history of the theater at the Institute of Art History of the USSR Academy of Sciences and was editor in chief of the Theatrical Encyclopedia (vol. 1, 1961).

Mokul’skii’s first books (1916–17) dealt with linguistics; from 1918 he was a drama critic and teacher. His principal interests were the Italian and French art of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In his works on Moliere (1935), Racine (1939), Voltaire (1953), Boileau (1956), and Corneille (1956), Mokul’skii presented a detailed study of French classicism. His works on Italian literature of the 13th through 16th centuries and 18th-century Italian drama are very valuable.

Mokul’skii also wrote about the modern theater and cinema and about Soviet and foreign culture. He wrote the two-volume History of the Western European Theater (1936–39) and compiled the two-volume Anthology on the history of the Western European theater (1937–39; 2nd ed., vols. 1–2, 1953–55). The first two volumes of the History of the Western European Theater were published under his editorship (1956–57; he was also one of the editors of vol. 3, 1963).